THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LYNCHING.
By T.
THAT was both a horrible and a shameful crime that was committed at McKeesport, Pa., a few days since. Words fail in their power to describe the depth of degradation that is bound up in the heart of a man who indecently assaults and abuses a little girl of three years. That such a man should be severely punished, all good people will unhesitatingly affirm. But punishment should be dealt out by properly constituted and lawful authority, and not by a mob. When mobbing gets to be the order of the day, no man's life or property is safe. The mob does not wait to inquire carefully and calmly into the merits of a case; but wildly, and often furiously, spurred on by superheated feeling and drifting sentiment, the suspected culprit is charged upon and inhumanly tortured and killed. Not all who lend their influence to support mobbing have a realizing sense of what they are doing. He who takes the law into his own hands and assists in mobbing a man to-day, is helping to give an education to the people that may cause them to turn upon him to-morrow. Mobbing is, indeed, very risky business. It is the school that inculcates the breaking down of law and order, and enthrones anarchy and rioting of the worst kind. A strong sentiment of outraged justice may be the inspiration that is actuating the leaders of a mob. But because we are justly sensitive to the outrageous deed that some criminal has committed, that will not excuse us in turning criminal ourselves and violating the principles of law, order, and justice. For it is only just that any man should have a fair trial before he is punished. And if you assist a mob in punishing men without trial, you are helping to manufacture anarchy of the most violent order. This mobbing that we see here and there over the land is but the prelude to the reign of terror that is before the world. The very questions that are agitating this country now are the same questions that gave France her Revolution and Reign of Terror. And there is an unseen master-hand behind this mobbing that is training to scenes and acts of violence, and the time can not be long delayed when there will be such violence as the world has never known anything about in all its history. If ever there was a time when men needed sanctified and immovable calmness it is right now. T.